“Marriage of the parents was never part of the NBC requirements of the Constitution.
“SCOTUS, in a decision by William O. Douglas (therefore nearly 40 years ago) struck down bastardy as a relevant legal classification.”
One could argue from the timeline that marriage actually WAS a requirement up until the day that SCOTUS removed the disabilities of bastardy.
In the same way citizenship of the wife was unitary with the husband and not an issue...until it wasn’t circa 1920 when women gained their own citizenship rights shortly after they got the right to vote.
Then there is the new question of adopted children, test-tube children and children of homosexual “marriages” all of which could involve foreign birth and foreign citizenship of one or both “parents” or sperm donors.
Didn’t I read that in one state they are allowing three “parents” on a birth certificate? Holy Fleep Batman! We are in uncharted NBC territory! No wonder SCOTUS is “evading” this issue.
Yeah, the future of citizenship laws is going to be a mess!
Knowing you, this is a dumb question, but ... have you read the FAM on the determinations that the State Department must make for those claiming U.S. citizenship on behalf of a child born to a foreign surrogate mother for a U.S. citizen egg-donor mother and U.S. citizen sperm-donor father? (Such a child is considered born out of wedlock, BTW.)
Our FF couldn’t have foreseen such a mess, which is one of the reasons they gave us the ability to amend the Constitution.